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Best Populist Top-Ten Chart

Trash cans in front of Vintage Vinyl

Blame David Letterman if you must, but the supremacy of the Top Ten-style list is now complete. By breaking down every form of entertainment into subcategories and microcategories and allowing every wonk with a word processor and a modem to disseminate his opinions, it is now common knowledge that every movie, book, album and breed of dog will make at least two "Best Something" lists before running its course. (Are you picking up the irony of reading this in a best-of list? Just checking.) With all these lists and charts ranking artistic output, how can you determine who or what is really topping the pops? Well, the Vintage Vinyl brain trust has cleverly created the city's most accurate musical barometer. Two trash cans are strategically positioned outside the store at 6610 Delmar, so that departing consumers must pass by one or the other. These humble receptacles are festooned with those goddamn adhesive artist/title strips that seal CD jewelboxes, each one representing a purchase made within Vintage Vinyl's friendly confines. Music archaeologists, or the terminally bored, can count these strips and determine what really sells in St. Louis. Groups such as Fugazi and Belle and Sebastian may not make the Billboard Hot 100, but they have both had their day in the sun and garbage in St. Louis.